Video: Michelle & co talk about JetKos and the defeat caucus on O’Reilly

posted at 10:10 pm on July 23, 2007 by Bryan

I do think it’s possible, contra Kirsten’s “Wild West” contention, for corporations to sponsor blogs in good conscience, but the blogs seeking such sponsorship have to be able to assure sponsors that their sites won’t be filled with Kossack (or the right wing equivalent) hate. That’s one reason that I end up disagreeing with both Kirsten and Roger Simon on this whole question. The DailyKos routinely publishes vile diaries about Republicans and about the war and about American capitalism and our country as a whole, and the chief Kossack himself penned and never apologized for the “screw them” line that he leveled at Americans who were murdered by thugs in Iraq. Whatever you think of the war, no one with the DailyKos’ record should reasonably expect corporate sponsorship for anything that they do. They are anti-capitalist and anti-corporate on that web site. Just do a search on Wal-Mart and you’ll see. What sets the Kossacks off seems to be corporate success that isn’t tied to unions (and therefore to the Democrats) or that doesn’t conform to their parochial notions about acceptable corporate behavior (health care policies and so forth). JetBlue was foolish to sponsor YearlyKos and have its logo on the YK site. That doesn’t mean that corporations would be equally foolish to sponsor other blogs, liberal or conservative. DKos is a special case because of its track record. As Michelle said, the fish rots from the head down.

Takeaways from the segment: One of The Factor’s viewers thinks that Allahpundit, myself and all of you are “evil doers” because we post here. That assessment in all likelihood came from someone who bristles whenever President Bush describes al Qaeda terrorists with the same phrase, though, so I’d consider the source before taking offense. The liberal blogosphere, unchallenged by anything resembling a fact, does in fact have a great deal of influence. Evidently, Kos is more influential than the Democrat Leadership Council that was once headed up by Bill Clinton. And the impeachment caucus isn’t a fringe movement. Papa Bear needs to study up a bit.

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We blog, they have MayDay madness, when they do their live blog it costs the taxpayers untold funds, police, sanitation dept., traffic tie ups, business shut downs, fire dept paramedics etc etc etc…oh did I mention the sanitation dept. Our way is better..

Your emails are getting through. One of my addresses is completely full and it has started bouncing stuff back, but your emails are still getting through. It’s annoying to get that bouncback, and I’m trying to get it fixed.

I do think it’s possible, contra Kirsten’s “Wild West” contention, for corporations to sponsor blogs in good conscience, but the blogs seeking such sponsorship have to be able to assure sponsors that their sites won’t be filled with Kossack (or the right wing equivalent) hate.

Isn’t it the nature of the blogosphere that people post their feelings good or bad? You and I can define what we believe hate is, and for the most part, I think we would be in agreement. But there are exceptions to the rule and the less tolerant among us can find offense in anything. I’ve witnessed that on this very blog (one I find to be almost family-friendly). Certainly I would agree the DailyKos is a hate-filled website who frequently eats their own for a radical agenda, but then my views couldn’t be farther to the right of theirs, or those who post comments there. Even taking sharp exception to what I consider disgusting comments over there, I haven’t seen an internet code clearly defining hate that many corporations can measure a blog against. As an example, Allah is an atheist whose occasional comments regarding Christianity (no, I’m not turning this into another religious debate – just developing an example) could really turn off many who have strong religious beliefs, and could be viewed as hate speech by someone sensitive enough to be offended by it. Should a boycott of Hot Air occur? God forbid! I love this site. Just saying, it’s harder to define than that.

That would be like John Edwards going bald. The world would end as we know it

William Amos on July 23, 2007 at 11:14 PM

Hmmm. So like how do we know that Silky Pony isn’t ALREADY bald, and that his appearances are not be filled by Japanese androids — a la Stepford wives.
(Oops. I KNEW that I was lingering in that Cindy Sheehan thread WAY too long.)

The average visitor spends only a few seconds reading the front page, but spikes of more than 1.1 million visitors in a single day aren’t unusual. To have access to those eyeballs, advertisers pay up to $14,000 a month. Moulitsas says he’s on track to make $600,000 in revenue this year, and his expenses don’t go much beyond programming and $7,000 a month for servers and bandwidth.

Close to 99 percent of the site is user-generated – it hosts 14,000 comments a day and 2,000 miniblogs called diaries. Moulitsas has figured out how to turn readers into writers, to transform discontent into content.

You would think that progressive dogma would demand that he pay at least a living wage to his content generators.

Not that I’m into sinister conspiracies, but I have to wonder how much of a role Soros financing plays in this behind the scenes.

Probably not much -

I think you are very much mistaken. Soros is THE moneybag behind the nutroots. He’s kept moveon afloat and no doubt funds KOS. Both Soros and Theresa Kerry donate millions of dollars to leftwing organizations like the Tides Foundation, who redistribute the money to strictly leftwing causes. Another big contributor to leftist causes is MS co-founder Paul Allen, though not just to leftwing causes.

Soros is such a big Bush-hater, personally, that he dumped millions into the nutroots’ bank accounts for the 2006 election and was a heavy Democratic Party donor to defeat Bush in 2004.

Soros is also a convicted crook (EU market rigging), a naturalized US citizen, and is the epitome of everything that “progressives” love to hate — greedy and power hungry.

Yet they except his money, cheerfully, and one has to wonder how much of his personal agenda has become the agenda of KOS, Moveon, DU, and so on. As they say, money talks and bullsh*t walks.

Why would a blog sell out to a corporation, anyway? Isn’t it the very idea behind blogs that they are beholden to no corporate interests and the opinion can flow unfettered?

Which is not to say that advertising links fall under the same category…they’re a ‘take it or leave it’ thing that don’t imply any alignment. Besides, I do love funneling liberal money into conservative coffers by clicking the links they put up on our blogs.

If commenter’s ‘vented’ here, with the language and rhetoric exhibited at Koz, they would be bounced. We know the rules are respect them. Koz kids are all about NOT following rules.
Guess who has happier lives? ;)